


The Stray Witch's Guide to the Arcane

by endrega_Turtlesse



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Darcy owns a shop, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Halloween, Healthy Relationships, Multi, Partners Support Each Other, everyone is a witch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27249748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endrega_Turtlesse/pseuds/endrega_Turtlesse
Summary: What happens when the Blue Moon and All Hallow's Eve coincide? Darcy forgets, of course.Good thing she has her partners to help out.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Loki, Darcy Lewis/Loki/Natasha Romanov, Darcy Lewis/Natasha Romanov, Loki/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 11
Kudos: 23





	The Stray Witch's Guide to the Arcane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shorthairedme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shorthairedme/gifts).



> For the wonderful lilaclanters. Thank you for the beautiful Halloween card, darling!

_Shit, shit, shit, shit._ Darcy _knew_ she was forgetting something. It was just too easy, these past few weeks, of _course_ there was something she was forgetting.

Shit.

Jane even circled it in her calendar for her, so really, she has no excuse. None other her stupidity.

Shit.

Darcy checks the calendar again in the vague hope that it would’ve magically changed (not impossible, sometimes her magic runs rampant, so don’t blame her for hoping!) but no. The Blue Moon ceremony coinciding with All Hallow’s Eve.

Just for the sake of making her feelings clear, shit.

That makes everything… a little harder. To be fair, not impossible – Darcy has been prone to forgetting it for a while now, and before she met Jane there was no one to remind her – but, well. She hasn’t missed the rush.

You see, Darcy owns a shop. A pretty good one, if she might say so herself – The Stray Witch’s Guide to the Arcane, selling all kinds of potions to the magical community, and harmless trinkets to the rest. For her, a Blue Moon means all kinds of rituals and the demand for the potions associated with them; All Hallow’s Eve just means craziness.

Normally, she’d have made the Blue Moon potions a few days in advance. They can’t sit for very long without losing their potency, but they would all be used on the day of the Blue Moon anyway, and some witches like to get ahead of the crowd even if it means slightly weaker potions. That would’ve been if it didn’t fall on All Hallow’s Eve. This way…

She’s been getting ready for All Hallow’s Eve for close to a month now: spell-flavored candies, enchanted trinkets, fake potions for the normals and the real deal for the magical. It’s a lot of work, especially now that Jane is living with Thor and managing their own business, getting ready for their own bout of insanity.

And now she has no potions ready for the Blue Moon.

Has she said “shit”, yet?

Well, there is really only one thing she can do.

Darcy sighs. It’s not that she doesn’t love spending time with her partners, it’s just that she prefers to… keep them out of the shop. Every time they get in, something is enchanted differently, or re-shelved, or disappeared (yes, Darcy knows who took those gloves and it wasn’t some customers), or just destroyed during some, khm, athletic activities. So, having them in the shop is not optimal. But Darcy has exactly a day and a half until Blue Moon and All Hallow’s Eve, none of the Blue Moon potions done, a significant portion of the last-minute All Hallow’s Eve preparations still ahead of her, and no budget to hire someone. So, no choice, really.

She sighs again, but this time it’s more to expel the pre-frustration of how this will inevitably end, and she dials.

\--

In the end, two phone calls don’t take long. Neither does it take long for them to show up.

“Hello, love,” Loki steps in the door, smirk on his face, and Darcy sighs again. “So what are we doing today?”

“Waiting for Natasha, right now,” Darcy smiles at him reluctantly. He did come, they’re both coming, and they’re doing it to help her out, even though they’d surely have their own things to do. There isn’t a self-respecting witch who’s not busy right now, preparing for the Blue Moon and All Hallow’s Eve.

“She’s only a step behind me,” Loki says, rounding the counter to kiss Darcy on the cheek.

“Good,” Darcy says, and no, she’s not blushing. They’ve been dating for years, now. She has no reason to blush. “Then I only have to explain what we have to do once.”

“Always so efficient,” Loki teases her, and Darcy scowls. Before she’d have a chance to snipe back, the bells above the door jiggle again.

“Darcy,” Natasha steps in, nodding slightly at them. “Loki, I see you were quicker.”

“I was at Thor’s place, I came from closer,” he shrugs. It’s a common competition between them, to see who’s quicker, so the fact that he’s willing to push it aside touches Darcy.

She leans over to quickly peck Loki on the cheek before straightening out and turning to business.

“Alright guys,” she claps her hands together. “We have a lot to do, so thanks for helping out. However, please, please, please don’t make me any more work by messing things up, okay?”

Natasha snorts but nods, and Loki reluctantly follows suit.

“Only promised for today,” he adds, and Darcy waves her hand.

“Yeah, yeah, didn’t think so otherwise.”

“Just to make it clear,” Natasha cuts in. “Wouldn’t want to accidentally promise something we don’t want to keep.”

This time it’s Darcy’s turn to snort, but she nods.

“Yeah, whatever. Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Loki, you’re gonna make the Blue Moon charms – don’t worry, a list is pinned in the office –, and Natasha you get potion duty. Go from most to least essential and we’ll see how much we can manage, anything is more than what I have right now.”

“Should I put them in normal bottles or the special magic-reserving ones from Tony?”

Darcy chews on her lips a moment, calculating.

“Let’s put them in normal ones,” she decides. “They only have a day to go, and the special ones are more expensive. I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“I can put a preserving charm on them,” Natasha nods, and they get to work.

Natasha takes over the backroom with its cauldron and Loki settles in the office, leaving the shop itself to Darcy, which is just fine, since she has to set out the All Hallow’s Eve things.

First she brings up the charms and small potions she made from the basement and arranges them on the shelves. The sweets go relatively near the door, in reach for children to yearn, with the enchanted ones further in. The shelves a bit farther back in are filled with little trinkets – little bronze cat statues that swipe your finger if you go near the belly, tiny pumpkins that twinkle on their own, candles both enchanted for rituals and just to make a house feel like a home, spiders that can move around on their own … Darcy always had too many ideas for Halloween and not enough shelf space to put them on.

At the deepest part of the store where regular customers rarely ventured, she stocked up the ingredients. More mundane ones, herbs and minerals and crystals, next to the more exotic, eye of newt, basilisk teeth, snips and snails. Then behind the counter the amulets and wands, the most powerful ones carefully locked away. At last she stocks up the ice boxes with the All Hallow’s Eve potions.

When she’s done with the shelves, Darcy checks in on the others.

Loki is so deeply lost in his work he doesn’t even register Darcy’s touch on his shoulder, so she just smiles and lets him be. He can get a laser focus that makes him super effective, but very grumpy if interrupted, and Darcy learnt a long time ago when to leave him be. He will emerge when he’s done.

Natasha looks up when Darcy enters the backroom, the room spicy and steamy around her, the aromas of the potent potions cloaking the air.

“Ugh,” Darcy gags a little. “Let’s not forget to air out the room when you’re done. I don’t know how you haven’t suffocated.”

“You get used to it,” Natasha’s lips curl up in a smile. “It’s not so bad. I’ve smelled much worse.”

Darcy hmmps. “Doesn’t mean you have to smell it,” she reminds Natasha. “Let me bring up the air purifier. I think I have one left from the All Hallow’s Eve potions.”

“You don’t have to,” Natasha frowns at her, but Darcy just flashes a smile and disappears back into the main room.

Just as she knows when to leave Loki alone, she also knows when to not take Natasha’s word. Despite all their years together, she sometimes still forgets she’s allowed to ask for things just for herself.

Darcy fetches the purifier plant from the basement, its leaves shaking slightly in the air. It’s quite big, so Darcy has to hip-check her way back into the backroom, and she lets out a relieved breath when she finally puts it down.

And if she needed any proof of the potion fumes filling the air to the brim, the purifier’s buds start swelling instantaneously, some of the fuller ones beginning to bloom.

“See?” she points to it, but Natasha just blinks at her, refusing to let her expression change.

Instead, she nods at the pile of bottles on the table beside her.

“There, those are already done,” she says. “You can take them out.”

Darcy shakes her head, but she can’t keep the fond smile off her face. Instead, she leans over to peck Natasha on the cheek as she passes to bundle the bottles up into baskets, and going by Natasha’s huff, she knows Darcy let that one go.

Back in the main room she places the finished bottles in ice boxes, marked clearly apart from the All Hallow’s Eve potions. The only thing Darcy is still missing from this clusterfuck is to have someone accidentally drink a fireworks potion or bake a were potion into the pie they’ll serve to all their guests.

When everything is to her standard and there’s no chance some poor schmuck will blow up the town, she moves on to the center of the space. It’s currently filled with cauldrons and brooms, robes and hats, mittens and leg warmers (basements are really cold, okay. Many witches catch colds too much), but for tomorrow she needs to make space. So she pushes them together and stacks and squeezes, and maybe accidentally folds reality a bit, and in the end a third of the space is free.

She moves back down to the basement and lugs out the bigger decorations. She ordered or made moving skeletons, tree branches with gently swaying spiderwebs, mummies that blink when you walk past, floating axes, even some nooses that follow you if you walk past beneath them (carefully enchanted to break apart if something snags in them, though). Now she arranges them in what free space she has, making sure that everything is visible.

It takes her the better part of two hours to move everything up and into place, but when she’s done, the shop looks ready. Of course, there are still the charms and the rest of the potion bottles to place, but those mostly go into ice boxes or behind the counter, so the place won’t look much different.

\--

In the end, they stay way later than Darcy usually does, but they get everything done and ready. All the potions wait in their ice boxes, the charms and amulets are locked away behind the counter, and all the All Hallow’s Eve merchandise fills the shelves to the bursting.

Darcy locks the door behind them with a sense of pride she can see reflected on the faces of Loki and Natasha, too.

“Thanks, guys,” she smiles at them as she pockets the key and turns towards the street. “Couldn’t have done this without you.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Loki draws her in to one side, Natasha to his other. “As you always say, we’re in this together.”

“That we are,” Darcy smiles, and they walk home together. That they are.

**Author's Note:**

> I live on tea and acknowledgement. Feed me?


End file.
